Avengers could help make this a record-setting summer for movies

Avengers: Age of Ultron, the latest film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, will be released May 1. The film is expected to have record-breaking opening weekend sales of $217 million, Bloomberg reports. Along with a few other potential hits, the new comic book flick could make for a mammoth year of ticket sales.

Here’s Bloomberg:

Disney kicks things off May 1 with Avengers: Age of Ultron, a sequel that could be the biggest film of the summer and possibly the year, and also has Inside Out, its first Pixar feature since 2013. Universal’s Jurassic World opens June 12 and the animated Minions a month later.

Those four alone could sop up about 30 percent of ticket sales this summer, the busiest time for theaters, based on estimates by BoxOffice.com. The robust slates from Disney and Comcast’s Universal mean a tougher slog for competing films even in a season that researcher Rentrak says will set a record, rising as much as 20 percent and beating the $4.75 billion mark set in 2013.

This summer might show that even in an age of streaming and video-on-demand, big hits can still get people into theaters in big ways.

Disney bought Marvel in 2009 for $4.24 billion.

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